Office of Civil Rights revises lottery process to encourage diversity at charter school

Wednesday

Apr 11, 2012 at 8:32 PM

BEAUFORT - The U.S. Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights has directed the inclusion of an additional "card" for minority students who participate in enrollment lotteries at Riverview Charter School.

Riverview uses a lottery to allocate enrollment slots among applicants. Based on instructions in a letter from OCR to Board of Education Chairman Fred S. Washington, Jr., all Riverview applicants will receive at least one card to enter in the lottery. Students from zip codes 29920 (Fripp Island), 29940 (Seabrook), 29941 (Sheldon) and 29945 (Yemassee) will receive three additional lottery cards, as would students with single parents and kindergarten applicants who attended a public or U.S. Department of Defense preschool program. One additional card will go to minority applicants, including African-American, Hispanic/Latino, American Indian or Asian students.

Under a 40-year-old voluntary desegregation agreement between the school district and the federal government, OCR must approve local board decisions that involve, among other things, student assignments that might affect the demographic makeup of school populations. OCR has said that because Riverview's enrollment does not comply with the district's desegregation agreement, the school must reduce its percentage of white students and increase its percentage of minority students.

OCR's said that its directive came after it considered "the outcomes of trial lotteries using various weighting factors, and carefully considered the progress (or lack thereof) that Riverview has made in meeting the Desegregation Plan's requirements related to student enrollment."

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